Imperial's Data Science Institute Celebrates its 10th Anniversary

Imperial’s Data Science Institute celebrated its 10th Anniversary in 2024 by reflecting on the past, present and future of data science.

On Friday 6 December 2024, members, friends, and colleagues of the Data Science Institute at Imperial gathered to celebrate its 10th anniversary. 

The celebration event, which was held at Imperial's South Kensington Campus, was a joyous moment to reflect on the past decade of data science and to consider what the future holds for the relatively new discipline. 

During the event, attendees heard speeches from the Data Science Institute (DSI) Directors, Dr Mark Kennedy and Dr Rossella Arcucci, and a toast from the Chair of the Executive Board of Directors for Imperial-X (I-X), Professor Eric Yeatman. Under the new Imperial Schools of Convergence Science that were announced earlier this year, the DSI will work closely with I-X under the School for Human and Artificial Intelligence. 

Attendees of the event also watched a short video, created to celebrate and reflect on the past ten years. Throughout the video, which you can watch below, Dr Kennedy and Dr Arcucci from the DSI, along with Professor Kenneth Benoit and Professor Martin Anthony from the LSE Data Science Institute, Alwin Magimay, Global Head of AI at PA Consulting, Dr Zeynep Engin, Director at Data for Policy CIC, and Imperial's Vice Provost for Research and Enterprise, Professor Mary Ryan, shared their thoughts on the discipline of data science. 

Reflecting on the importance of the DSI's work, Professor Mary Ryan said: "Data Science is more important than it ever has been. We are seeing emerging technologies, the growth of AI language models - they're all underpinned fundamentally by data science. If we don't get the data science right, we don't get the right AI...We need data science for humanity."

Data Science for Humanity

The theme for the DSI’s anniversary celebrations was ‘Data Science for Humanity’, inspired by the new Imperial strategy, ‘Science for Humanity’, which was launched earlier this year.

Throughout the video, the team reflected on what this means – asking provocative questions such as is data science still a thing? And if it is, what does it do for us now and in the future?

Answering these challenging questions involves collaboration across multiple disciplines. As explained in the video, data science is multidisciplinary and ultimately combines three key components: mathematics and statistics, computing, and domain knowledge.

“Without domain knowledge, we can’t build the right models, and we can’t interpret the models correctly,” said Professor Benoit, former Director of the LSE Data Science Institute.

Data Science Empowering AI and Society

Data science as a discipline is still new, and clearly defining it has been an important challenge undertaken by the Data Science Institute in recent years.

As DSI Director Dr Kennedy explains: “What is Data Science? We use those two words to define it. Data is anything we learn from, and the science of data is where it comes from, how we gather and store it, how we transform it into structures we can learn from, how we visualise it, how we secure and protect it, and how we learn from it.”

Dr Arcucci adds, “Data science is not only the science that comes after data collection. Data science is a science that can drive the data collection, the management, the analysis and the learning you can get from data.”

The Data Science Institute believes the discipline is crucial for empowering AI, acting as the interface to AI and machine learning. Looking to the future, the Institute and its members believes tackling the most pressing global challenges in health, climate and society will depend on good data scientists.

Watch the full video

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Photography: Danny Fitzpatrick, DF Photography

Videography: Tantrwm Media